{"pk":25480,"title":"When high pitches sound low:\nChildren’s acquisition of space-pitch metaphors","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Some languages describe musical pitch in terms of spatial\nheight; others in terms of thickness. Differences in pitch\nmetaphors also shape adults’ nonlinguistic space-pitch\nrepresentations. At the same time, 4-month-old infants have\nboth types of space-pitch mappings available. This tension\nbetween prelinguistic space-pitch associations and their\nsubsequent linguistic mediation raises questions about the\nacquisition of space-pitch metaphors. To address this issue,\n5-year-old Dutch children were tested on their linguistic\nknowledge of pitch metaphors, and nonlinguistic spacepitch\nassociations. Our results suggest 5-year-olds\nunderstand height-pitch metaphors in a reversed fashion\n(high pitch = low). Children displayed good comprehension\nof a thickness-pitch metaphor, despite its absence in Dutch.\nIn nonlinguistic tasks, however, children did not show\nconsistent space-pitch associations. Overall, pitch\nrepresentations do not seem to be influenced by linguistic\nmetaphors in 5-year-olds, suggesting that effects of\nlanguage on musical pitch arise rather late during\ndevelopment.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"pitch"},{"word":"Space"},{"word":"Metaphor"},{"word":"LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY"},{"word":"Language Acquisition"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1v08v2x9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Sarah","middle_name":"","last_name":"Dolsheid","name_suffix":"","institution":"Department of Rehabilitation and Special Education, University of Cologne","department":""},{"first_name":"Sabine","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hunnius","name_suffix":"","institution":"Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University","department":""},{"first_name":"Asifa","middle_name":"","last_name":"Majid","name_suffix":"","institution":"Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University; Center for Studies in Language, Radboud University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25480/galley/15104/download/"}]}